Freshwater Road is the story of one young woman's journey into adulthood via the political and social upheavals of the civil rights movement. A young black collegian, Celeste Tyree, leaves Ann Arbor to go to Pineyville, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964 to help found a Freedom School and a voter registration project as part of Freedom Summer. As the summer unfolds, she confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also truths about herself and her own family.